Networked nodes typically communicate with one another using a communication protocol, for example the 802.11 series of protocols commonly known as WiFi, HomePlug® protocols for power-line communication, or other protocols for communication between nodes. Some protocols are contention based allowing many nodes to share a single communication medium. Contention based protocols may transmit data on the communication medium using protocol data units (PDU). In a contention based protocol using the open systems interconnection (OSI) model, various layers may have PDUs associated with them. Each PDU may require header information or other overhead information to allow transmission of the PDU. Each transmission on the communication medium incurs a certain amount of channel access overhead, i.e., data that is not payload data for an intended recipient. Physical layer PDUs (PPDU) are typically more efficient as they increase in size, due to a decrease in the overhead required relative to the size of the payload. Therefore, multiple smaller PPDUs typically require more overhead than a single larger PPDU, thereby decreasing the efficiency of the transmission medium. However, smaller PPDUs are becoming more common as enhancements are made to communication protocols to increase maximum throughput of the communication medium. In some cases, a node may have significant impact on the overall network throughput by transmitting many small PPDUs. A node transmitting at a low rate to multiple nodes may further reduce the overall throughput by transmitting many small PPDUs to multiple nodes. Still further, nodes used as repeaters may each transmit the same PPDU multiple times, thereby incurring additional overhead with each repeat transmission and further impacting the throughput.